Month: October 2011

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider the Constitutionality of the so-called Stolen Valor Act. McClatchy:

Passed unanimously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the politically popular legislation imposes prison sentences of up to one year on those who “falsely represent” either in writing or orally that they have received military decorations. The law covers false representations made before any kind of audience.

The case, United States v. Alvarez, developed from a California resident named Xavier Alvarez. “In 2007,” McClatchy reports, “while serving as an elected board member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in southern California, Alvarez announced at a board meeting that he was a wounded Marine veteran who had been awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism.” This was not true. Alvarez lied. So the FBI investigated him and charged him with violating the 2006 law established by the Stolen Valor Act. Alvarez pleaded guilty, receiving three years of probation and was fined $3,000.

Alvarez isn’t the only one. Colorado resident Rick Glen Strandlof also “faced criminal charges for falsely claiming to have been awarded the Purple Heart for wounds and the Silver Star for heroism in the battle of Fallujah during the Iraq war,” and for using an alias when he established a group called the Colorado Veterans Alliance.

There are obvious First Amendment violations here that I won’t insult our readers with articulating. What’s more interesting to me is that we are living in such a culture of honor, so subservient to militaristic symbolism and emblems of primordial brutishness, so reverent for the acclaimed sacrifice of those who devote themselves to violence at the order of the state, that such a violation of the human right to speak without harm to his neighbor can be passed unanimously in our legislature. This law, especially if it is upheld by the Supreme Court, is indicative of just how deeply sunk are Americans’ fondness for a martial culture, placing it even above the equally arbitrary religious pieties so prevalent here (since I don’t believe it’s against the law to declare yourself the messiah).

Just look at some of the rhetoric from the defenders of the law:

“Unfortunately, the significance of these medals is being devalued by phony war heroes who fabricate their honors and military careers,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said during the brief House debate. “They do so for greed and selfishness, and disrespect the service and sacrifice of our military heroes.”

…The Obama administration contends the law performs the “vital function” of protecting “the integrity and effectiveness of the military honors system.” False statements, the administration adds, are typically given less protection under the First Amendment.

The speech that would lead someone to falsely claim that he or she is a decorated veteran probably does not have any valuable social function, as does political speech or journalism that is critical of the government. And it doesn’t have to. That I might be imprisoned or fined for uttering harmless words that are admittedly an affront to a way of life, an insult to this society-wide emotional attachment to machismo violence in service to the nation’s rulers is infuriatingly restrictive, both culturally and politically.

See more news and interviews on the recent Ugandan intervention here.

The dramatic expansion of drone wars in various countries targeted by the US national security state, has at least in part been predicated on this notion that drones are “precision” killers and we have the ability to target single individuals instead of land ground troops and wage a wasteful face-to-face war with non-state, non-uniformed actors. Well, behold the exactitude of murder-by-remote-control:

In the first known case of friendly fire deaths involving an unmanned aircraft, Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Smith, 26, and Navy Hospitalman Benjamin D. Rast, 23, were killed on April 6 by a Predator drone in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, after Marine commanders mistook them for Taliban.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the unreleased Pentagon report found that Marine officers on the scene and the Air Force crew piloting the drone from halfway around the world were unaware that analysts watching the live video feed from a third location in Terre Haute, Ind. had doubts about the identity of the targets.

Using a written chat system to communicate with the pilots, the analysts initially wrote that the two figures in question were “friendlies,” suggesting they were American troops. But a few seconds later, they changed their assessment, writing they were “unable to discern” who the figures were.

The report faults poor communications, mistaken assumptions and “a lack of overall common situational awareness,” but found that no one involved was “culpably negligent or derelict in their duties.”

The Times notes that the incident is similar to another Predator attack in 2009, in which a convoy of Afghan civilians was mistakenly targeted as Taliban.  In a lengthy investigation, the paper traced how a series of errors in communicating and interpreting surveillance information led to the deaths of 15 innocent civilians.

To recap, US drones in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of civilians, including at least 168 children. Investigative journalist Noor Behram, on the ground in Pakistan for years counting civilian casualties from drones, estimated that for every 10 to 15 civilians, drone attacks kill one militant.

Note that the news of killing two American servicemen gets headlines. We are told their names, how old they are, their jobs, their rank. The bulk of those killed have not had such privileged status and treatment. We don’t know their names. Nobody cared to check.

Paul Pillar is one of the most astute thinkers on foreign policy around and there is much on which he and I agree. But his latest blog post runs far afoul from his usual incisive, realist analysis and betrays the spirit of his magazine’s blog which bears the name Skeptic.

Pillar says Obama’s decision “to assist governments in central Africa in eradicating the murderous band that calls itself the Lord’s Resistance Army is the right thing to do.” Primarily, he supports the mission because, he predicts, it doesn’t carry with it the potential for regime change, mission creep, extended deployments, or – presumably – worsening the conflict.

The target of the intervention is not a regime, and so there is no chance of confusing the atrocity-curbing purpose of the mission with regime change. The only respectable response of the international community to the Lord’s Resistance Army is to eradicate it. Because the target is not a regime, eradication would not involve the creation of vacuums or the need to establish a new order to replace one that has been removed. The LRA is a destroyer of order, not a provider of it.

And because there is not an issue of building a new order, there is not the risk of the initial mission transforming into something larger and more ambitious. If it looks like somewhat more than the one hundred people to be dispatched would do some good, the administration should be open to a modest enlargement without fear that this would be another step down a slippery slope into a quagmire.

How fortunate he is not to have to stress about things not going as planned. I’m afraid I don’t have that luxury. It’s true that the mission has little chance of morphing into regime change, as it did so quickly in Libya and other recent imperial adventures. But does that really preclude the possibility of an expanded role for these initial 100 US combat forces?

Indeed, this deployment itself is an expansion of US interventionism in Uganda. The US and Ugandan army have been increasingly close partners as the latter have been helping fight al Shabaab forces in Somalia for the former. In June, the Pentagon sent part of a $45 million package in military equipment to Uganda. The aid included four small drones, body armor and night-vision and communications gear and is in part being used against al-Shabab. The request for aid to Uganda in FY 2012 is set at over $527 million. Fostering closer ties by intervening against the LRA on behalf of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni could very likely lead to additional military support for the ruler. Heck, who’s to say this close relationship won’t end up the way a lot of America’s “close relationships” have been in the Middle East: training a potentially abusive military in an autocratic state, sending aid and arms, setting up military bases, permanent deployments, etc. – in essence, empire building in Africa. It is at least plausible that national security planners prefer such a relationship, especially considering the Somalia situation.

Or what if things really don’t go as planned. Pillar may not fear unintended consequences, but I’m sure civilians on the ground know better. In 2009, when the US teamed up with the Ugandan army to coordinate a series of raids on LRA encampments – codenamed “Operation Lightning Thunder” –  it failed miserably and let LRA forces escape only to go on a killing spree in surrounding areas, resulting in somewhere between 600-900 slaughtered and many more raped and maimed.  Ivan Eland has compared this to “needlessly poking a hornet’s nest.”

I can perceive very little warrant in Pillar’s predictions of greener pastures as a result of this fateful decision. The truth is, a whole host of things could go wrong. The area is one of the most dangerous in the world and if nothing else, the mission could merely solidify Washington’s plans for Somalia, which are apparently to conduct a secret and inhumane kill/capture program there while propping up murderous thugs to counter other murderous thugs.

And apparently, Pillar buys into the humanitarian rationale behind this intervention. He writes:

The United States can go into this mission without being seriously suspected of ulterior motives beyond the declared purpose of ending atrocities and saving lives.

Can it? So the impetus for Obama to send in 100 of America’s most highly trained, elite killing forces was merely out of concern for suffering civilians? The LRA appears to be a nightmarish group of homicidal psychopaths. But Pillar should know better, considering nearly all of America’s wars of aggression have had the humanitarian justification tied to it. The US is now administering and/or supporting atrocities of its own and is ignoring other comparable ones that don’t happen to be on the strategically important radar. Before we can applaud such fraudulent claims to be the policemen of the world, we are obligated to at least put a stop to our own needless violence.

Lastly, there’s the issue of the law. What authority, what right does Obama have to send US combat troops to a far off land without the consent of Congress or the people? Can we not recognize that the martial frivolity and aggressiveness which currently defines America’s foreign policy is, in part, lent credence when the lawful restrictions curbing war-at-will administrations are excused in the name of humanitarianism?

I don’t have the foresight to be able to predict what will come of this latest military intervention into Uganda. Nor does Paul Pillar. And nor does Obama, who we now know is as reckless and bellicose in his war-wieldling as his predecessor.

I wrote recently about Herman Cain’s apparent cluelessness about foreign policy (among other things). He derided so-called “gotcha questions” like “who is the president of Uzbekistan?” He basically said he didn’t know, didn’t need to know, and didn’t even need to know how to pronounce Uzbekistan.

Now, in Cain’s latest interview on Meet the Press, he exhibits further ignorance about foreign policy (don’t mind the gratuitous Boeing advertisement leading into what we’re supposed to think of as an independent news show):

It honestly seems Cain is unable to elaborate on these supposedly lots ” of other reasons we needed to go to Iraq,” and the lots “of benefits that have come out of Iraq.” And what’s this talk of Iran planning to attack Iraq if the US withdraws? Hasn’t the Maliki regime developed rather close ties with Iran? What has Cain been reading?

Well, he says he has been “reading” people like John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, and KT McFarland. So then, does he consider himself a neoconservative? Huh? What’s a neoconservative? Cain isn’t familiar.

Total, utter ignorance of international affairs and US foreign policy vis-à-vis places like Uzbekistan apparently is not a disqualifier for running for President of the United States. And now, neither is being completely unfamiliar with one of the central ideological movements affecting American foreign policy in recent years.

Guys like Cain get into office and are basically puppets for the imperial technocrats in career spots in the Pentagon and national security apparatus. He is a blank slate. He is not simply uninformed; he is dangerous. And he is rising in the polls.

Part of the reason these huge swaths of ignorance about some of the most serious societal and political issues facing us fails to disqualify a candidate for the highest office in the land, and part of why he is rising in the polls, is because Americans are even less informed than Cain. Democracy has developed such that they feel justified in paying exactly zero attention for four years straight and then popping up at their local elementary school to vote in another imperial psychopath. A Pew poll released at the beginning of the month found that almost half of the American electorate cannot name a single Republican candidate for President. Sigh.